Ken Harker WM5R
2010 ARRL 10 Meter Contest - Phone Only K5TR (WM5R, op. )

Thanks as usual to George for letting me borrow his station for this contest. This was my tenth ARRL 10 Meter Contest. I've operated them all from the K5TR station in Blanco County, Texas, and mostly with the same antennas. So far, I've finished in the Top Five every year and won the contest once, so it must be a good station.

This was the second-best start I've had in the 10 Meter Contest, with over 500 QSOs in the log before the band closed. The band was open from the very start, but really picked up in the second hour of the contest, with Eskip to all over the US southeast. Another opening developed to Arizona and southern California, and I was able to make contacts until almost 0630 UTC and I heard some west coast stations on the air until almost 0700 UTC.

The band was open to Florida and Arizona most of the day on both Saturday and Sunday, but not with really high rates. At one point on Saturday morning, the Eskip was so focused, I worked 11 Florida stations in a row. Florida was also by far my most worked multiplier, with over 100 more contacts than any other multiplier. We also had good Eskip openings on both Saturday night and Sunday afternoon.

The band was also in much better shape this year to the Caribbean and South America on both days. In fact, Brazil was my tenth-most-worked multiplier. Outside of North and South America, I worked Hi, VK, ZL, E5, EA8, ZS, and FR. I was also interested to see what I could work in Mexico. I ended up with 40 Mexican QSOs in 21 states. By comparison, I worked 25 Canadians in 7 provinces. I noticed many fewer XE stations on the air on Sunday than on Saturday.

The last big opening on Sunday was a lot of fun. At the peak, I worked seven stations in one clock minute. I'm not sure I've ever done that before.

Contest Logging was done with TR LOG contest logging software. The following reports and log were created using TR LOG's post-contest processor.

• CBS report
• Continental Distribution
• Multiplier Distribution